First of all, just to underline, I do hope I made it clear in my submission that trafficking is a distinct term to the extent that trafficking does require a third party. Not all prostitution meets the definition of trafficking. If there's no third party involved, it can't be trafficking. You can't traffic yourself. However, whether a third party is involved or not, that does not end the question about what's actually going on in that trade.
I agree with Pivot and I agree with Judge Morrison that the provision that applies that still has some residual criminalization of those who sell sex ought to be repealed. It serves no useful purpose to criminalize people for their own exploitation just because they happen to be near a day care or a school.
What these groups who are advocating decriminalization don't want to talk about is the men who buy sex. It's always cast in terms of this population of sex workers who apparently don't come into prostitution with any of these constraints and should simply be left to protect themselves, apparently, from the violence they encounter. I don't buy it.
I think it's looking at the wrong end of the transaction. The men who buy sex, just buy it. They're the ones who create the market for the traffickers. They don't go around making choices based on the trafficking or non-trafficking distinctions. It would be impossible to have a legal provision that required proof that they knew that the person they were purchasing was being trafficked. It's not how the sex trade works.
I don't think all prostitution is trafficking. What I want to be careful about is that we don't then turn around and say, the rest of it must be terrific, if there's no third party involved, or that the men who do that aren't contributing to the problem of trafficking, because they are.